I'm loving this thread/discussion! What is truly permanent and what does
it truly mean to preserve a record eternally. {Be warned: the 2nd and 3rd
paragraphs are a bit of a ramble of thoughts that have been percolating in
my noggin for some years. I just had to let it out.]
Like Larry, I too don't but into the 300 year concept. There are scads of
documents well over 300 years old that are legible and possess value.
America's founding documents come to mind right away, but as we know
they're not yet 300. Gutenberg's Bibles and the Magna Carta are over 300
years and still in pretty good shape. The Dead Sea Scrolls are over 2000
years old. Everything at some point ceases to exist. Nothing is forever,
even if it gets classified as permanent. At some point, everything we
create loses its purpose and meaning. As archival records, it is our duty
to try to preserve them as best possible for as long as is possible and
sensible.
This thread reminds me of a conversation I had in college after my art
history class with some classmates. I think it was when we had just been
lectured on early Renaissance art and how there were just a handful of
"artists" crating work in a natural style (as opposed to the formalist
Byzantine style). We transferred the Renaissance art scene to present day
and concluded that most artists were pretty lousy, unknown and poorly
marketed. Even if they were good or great, without the right patrons,
their work ended up in the dung heap with the lousy stuff, or maybe a
single artifact lives on, anonymously, because all other documentation on
the artist no longer exists. In a setting where patronizing the arts was
encouraged, not everyone could pony up the cash to hire Palladio,
Michelangelo or Botticelli; patrons of lesser standing had to settle for
the likes of Stefano Cohen to paint a family portrait or design a home,
which went on to get obliterated from a war or earthquake. Let me circle
back to my point: Nothing is forever and what we do manage to retain are
just pieces of a whole. We'll never know what it was like to live in
Florence or Siena or Ravenna. Yes there are records and artifacts, but
they're just pieces of a larger story which can only be strung together
with human imagination and reason.
When the World Trade Towers crashed down, millions of dollars of art went
with it, including a massive Picasso tapestry that was in the lobby. I
remember that day clearly. I was working at Yale University then and went
out to the street, as did just about everyone else, since we didn't know
what target was next. Standing outside the library on Wall Street I
thought about what would happen if the Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book
Library across the street got blown up next. How would the world of
research and history be different. I concluded that while it would be
devastating, in the long term (100+ years), the loss of that knowledge
from civilization would be marginal at best.
Stephen Cohen, Records Manager
MetLife \ Legal Affairs
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-6796
212-578-2373
[log in to unmask]
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
The information contained in this message may be CONFIDENTIAL and is for the intended addressee only. Any unauthorized use, dissemination of the information, or copying of this message is prohibited. If you are not the intended addressee, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message.
List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]
|
